Biting the hand of Project Fear

Not bloody difficult at all

In an attempt to extricate herself from that distant galaxy where her plans for Brexit were formulated, Theresa May is revelling in the label ‘bloody difficult woman’. Jean Claude Juncker is finding out how difficult I can be, gloated Theresa as she grimaced over a poke of chips. Poor Theresa, struggling to comprehend the complexities of the Brexit process, and struggling to comprehend the important difference between difficult and delusional. Theresa wants bloody difficult to define her like iron lady defined Thatcher. Bloody difficult, the Mrs Mack of politics as soap opera.

The line from Downing Street is that the reports in the press of a Prime Ministerial dinner with the President of the European Commission which made Abigail’s Party seem like an audience with the Pope are nothing more than Brussels gossip mongering. At this point it’s worthwhile to point out that just because your neighbour is a terrible gossip, who will waylay you in the close to regale you of all the details of how the neighbour along the road had a drunken party that the polis were called out to, it doesn’t mean that she’s a liar. The thing about gossip is that it’s often hurtful, and it’s most often hurtful when it’s true. Just as difficult is not a synonym for delusional, gossip is not a synonym for lie.

The Brussels gossip line was faithfully reported by the BBC. So let’s move on. Nothing to see here then. Instead we should all gossip about Diane Abbott getting mixed up with some figures in a radio interview. For our national broadcaster it’s far more important to have a giggle at the temporary mix up of a woman who isn’t going to get the job of Home Secretary and who had a wee brain fart when asked about the figures for a sensible policy to increase police numbers, than it is to dwell on the fact that the woman who heads the government of the UK and who it seems will continue to lead it after this election doesn’t have a clue about the fundamentals of her job and is about to lead the entire country off a Brexit precipice.

But that Diane eh. Couldn’t remember a number as she rushed into an interview. That makes her unfit for high office so it does. Theresa May’s inability to grasp the complexities and ramifications of Brexit, and leaving the President of the EU Commission gobsmacked, well that’s just her being strong and stable and being a bloody difficult woman.

In her speech after Parliament was officially dissolved on Wednesday, our chip-challenged Prime Minister stood outside Downing Street and channelled Raycip Erdogan. Brussels is trying to interfere in Britain’s election, she said. They’re telling lies about me. I’m not delusional at all. Oh no. Britain really is going to come out of the other side of Brexit into a magic fairy land of unicorns that lay golden eggs. How dare those foreigners express an opinion about me. Everything should be a secret except what I choose to tell you. That’s the strong and stable government that I stand for. They’re making threats against me by telling the British public that I live in another galaxy. How dare they. The only person in these Brexit negotiations who should be making threats is me. It’s an insult to Britain’s decision to leave the EU to say this government is in another galaxy. We’re really in a fruit and nut case.

So here we are in 2017, with a UK government and opposition neither of which are fit for purpose. Those broad shoulders of Britain that Scotland was told it relies on turn out not to bear any functioning brain. Labour is divided, tribal, more concerned with its internal struggles. But the incompetence of Labour is as nothing compared to the looming disaster represented by Theresa May’s Conservatives.

Theresa May is secretive, controlling and authoritarian and that’s deeply concerning in a country like the UK which lacks a written constitution and clear and well defined limits to the powers of the Prime Minister. This election was only called in the first place because Theresa May wants to wipe out what’s left of parliamentary opposition. We have a Prime Minister who genuinely believes that having parliamentary opposition and scrutiny is a bad thing, a Prime Minister who is not merely clueless about Brexit, she’s clueless about the nature of democracy too. She’s running this general election as a presidential campaign. She’s positioning herself as the new Thatcher. British democracy is at serious risk with Theresa May. She wants all power for herself. She won’t say what she’s going to do with it.

Now Theresa has gone off the deep end and has openly accused the EU of threatening Britain and attempting to interfere in the General Election. When the British government encouraged every foreign leader and his dog to intervene in the Scottish referendum that was just fine and dandy. But when a foreign leader’s comments which are unhelpful to Theresa are leaked, she reacts like an autocrat. This is genuinely the kind of language we expect to hear from authoritarian leaders like Erdogan or Putin. It signals the end to the phoney Brexit war. Negotiations with the EU are going to be conducted in a nakedly hostile atmosphere. Whether it’s the arrogant ignorance typical of the British Conservatives, or whether it’s a deliberate Machiavellian strategy, Theresa May is creating the conditions where Britain could easily fall out of the EU without any deal at all. The worst of all possible Brexits, the nightmare scenario. And if that does come to pass she’ll blame the Germans, she’ll blame foreigners, and she will probably blame the Scots as well for undermining her at home.

In her speech she once again mentioned the “separatists” who want to divide the country. But the UK is being divided by Theresa and her Conservatives, a party that doesn’t understand the difference between difficult and delusion, or between democracy and majoritarianism. Theresa May’s idea of unity is for everyone who disagrees with her to shut up, and she called this General Election in order to give her a crushing parliamentary majority that will allow her to force everyone who doesn’t agree with her to shut up. But all she’s going to achieve is uniting the EU against her, and solidifying its opposition against her.

She is likely to achieve her majority. She’s even likely to make gains in Scotland as the Unionist cause coalesces around the Tories. But in the longer term Theresa May and all she represents signals the end of the Union and the final destruction of the post WW2 settlement. She’s destroying the liberal, public service oriented, outward looking Britain that Scotland was promised it could be a leading partner in. She offers us nothing, but demands our obedience and then cries separatist when we say no.

In the Financial Times on Wednesday it was reported that the exit cost to the UK of Brexit could reach €100 billion. Scotland’s share of that works out at approximately £1500 for every single person in the country. That’s what it’s going to cost each and every one of us to go down a path this country doesn’t want to go down. It’s a cost that will be added to Westminster’s Scottish deficit and used to tell us that we’re too poor.

For Scotland, we stand at the crossroads of two futures. Independence and making our own relationship with Europe and the rest of the world, or Theresa’s authoritarian Brexit Britain that lives in its soap opera delusions of Empire. That’s not a bloody difficult choice.

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39 comments on “Not bloody difficult at all”

I’m still struggling to grasp how, within the space of an hours shopping, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of fairy land has managed to set back international relations with continental Europe by nearly a century.

Not only accusing the EU of misrepresentation, but of actively attempting to undermine a UK GE ballot. I’m guessing that those international relations may be somewhat strained for the foreseeable future… as in fecked.

So, strong and stable? Is that what we are right now? Does the UK feel like a particularly politically and societally stable environment to anyone?

We’ve been pretty much banging this drum for quite some time and there is little pleasure in saying ‘told you so’. How and ever, that’s exactly what we did. The runaway right wing narrative of exclusion, intolerance and demonisation is hitting its station pretty much dead on time.

For Conservative government and Brexit UK’s media there is always another scapegoat to blame their actions upon.

Personally I think Mother Theresia is teetering on the brink of madness. Hopefully a few folk in England start to think that too. Just in the last few days you have had Deutsche Bank saying they will more around 5,000 jobs, 1,000 today from JP Morgan, hundreds at HSBC, not to mention 1,200 at the European Medicines Agency and Banking Authority.

She hasn’t gone off the deep end. She’s never BEEN in the shallow end! What she has done is crafty like a rabid fox. She has done EXACTLY what Donald Trump did before his election, with vague, amorphous, scared-of-the-potential-result mutterings about voter fraud and Russia and the Democrats and the ghost of Elvis and such. He said that if he lost, it wouldn’t be his fault, the election would be a sham, and he’d been stitched up. He basically passed the stolen-from-the-poor buck for responsibility for losing onto everybody but himself; done in his case, at least partly, to bolster a fragile ego that would have gone into meltdown had Donald Whaur’s Yer Truth Sir (just made that up) lost. But he won, and was happy, big gooey gurgly happy insane goo goo ga ga manchild, and all of a sudden the results were fair and fine, unlike his wonky, manky, sociopath(et)ic temperament.

Of course, the Tories just blatantly and blindly follow whatever their Republican scum allies do, so of course May was going to hedge her bets and do this sort of thing. She has probably had it prepared for months, admiring Wee Donny’s chutzpah in basically invalidating any election result in which he didn’t win. What May has done today is basically tell you “look, no result in this election matters unless I win, and the same will go for all future elections in my autocratic view.” She’s totally invalidated the very idea of democracy itself. Genius.

And if she does lose, she’s given herself a very convenient scapegoat, in the form of an amorphous, numberless, faceless cabal of interfering Johnny Foreigners (who figure large and in charge in middle England’s stormtossed erotically arousing wet dreams of oncoming murderous immigrant destruction), whom she can blame for the terrible insult that the UK has just suffered at the hands of those blame-free-England hating buggers in mainland Europe. She’s thrown her xenophobic followers a bone to bring them all more together (“We will fight those buggers on the beaches indeed, Theresa! We shoot when we see the whites of the darkie’s eyes! Just like in the good old days old gel!”) and to cause potential divisive and violent civil unrest if she loses. After all, her supporters then won’t be attacking her and her party for being callous lunatics, they’ll be attacking wotevah foreign muck done m’lady in! It’s a win-win situation for her: she loses, she gets to get away clean and blame-free. She wins, well, she wins.

Like I said, crazy like a rabid fox. Said this many times before, and will say it again, because it’s not more true than ever: literally ALL the Tories do is just puppydog-like follow America’s lead, because their former colony gives them an erection of the heart and bank balance as it reminds them of the jolly times when Britannia ruled the waves, you could just murder the locally blood wogs if they gave you any guff, Jeeves, top hole, and the queen was worshipped as a German-heritage Teutonic bubonic deity.

The moron things change indeed.

Here’s the perfect metaphor for May’s cabinet, and, by extension, England politically, right now; only going to worse, too.

It certainly is all a real Carry On. They say history repeats, first as tragedy then as farce. If Thatcher was the tragedy then May, I suppose, has to play out the farcical final act. And OMG! she actually looks the part …

There is something else, in all the new triumphant Britain becoming great again, we stood against them all, rhetoric they forgot something.
Around the time of WW2 Britain not only owned all its industries, it owned 25% of US industry, had a Gold Reserve Treasury in North Africa, directly controlled the resources and populations of massive chunks of the rest of the world.

Wasn’t too long ago when another candidate for high office made allegations of interference by foreign powers in an election, which she subsequently lost to an underdog. Is it too much to hope history repeats itself?

Mogabee, there are yoons who can see where this is going but rather than make the rational choice to head for the indy life boat they wrap themselves tight in the red white and blue and stubbornly cling to the sinking UK wreck waiting for divine intervention, or at least a trite delusional message from the Queen, as waters rise over their heads.

With everything that has been levelled against them ,why are this lot even in a position to call a general election ,
If even one of the charges against them is proven that should be it game over , all these inquires, Police, electoral commission, CPS , possible funding fraud from previous elections involving HSBC , mays personal involvement with her husband in dodgy dealings, criticism from the UN , Red Cross, Oxfam , Are the leaders of all the other parties asleep ? .
It’s bloody baffling, And for Mayhem to accuse the EU of interfering and trying to influence her bid for world domination really takes the Piss and she is really having a laugh, attack is the best form of defence, aye so is having a brass neck .

Anyone have a update on Englands election ? , because it doesn’t look like we have been invited to the party , check the news we have disappeared .

My thoughts are with all the comments above. When I heard the PM give her talk today I was flabbergasted at her stupidity. When you are the underdog in negotiations you do not publicly attack the other side. Crazy.

She’s been going of the deep end for weeks everytime snp question her in westminster especially angus all she does is dodge questions and throw insults now she’s crying foul that the eu interfering in the general election after acting tough for this mornings papers desperation and weaknesses is showing let’s make it worse for the torys tomorrow by kicking them out of all of Scotlands councils

I worry that the truth in such matters as this, and all the other lies and tricks, isn’t going to reach the general Scottish public; the British news won’t report it, and neither will our own news; so that if and when the time comes to vote again for independence, lies, misinformation and trickery will once again swing the vote to remain.

It really feels as though we can do nothing else but sit tight and cross our fingers.

Sitting tight means you cannot get out and talk to people. Crossing your fingers prevents you from communicating via keyboard and paper.

Today I will be resplendent in kilt and rosette at the local polling place. You are allowed to guess which party I will represent. On June 3rd I will be a marshal on the March for Independence in Glasgow.

Absolutely agree, and I meant cross our fingers come the actual referendum vote, not the build up to it. I’ve just come back from voting (probably for the same party you will represent) but I just feel the message isn’t reaching those crucial undecided voters, or that the majority of people aren’t seeking out the truth, rather than simply listening to whatever’s told to them by a biased media.

And as the keyboard is currently my only weapon in this fight, I just fear it doesn’t have the same reach as the BBC. But perhaps that’s my own pessimism talking. Nevertheless, I will be there in Glasgow, and I’ll continue to try and reach out to people.

Imagine that you are a couple, say from Walsall, and booked a May week end City Break in Glasgow.
You’ve arrived at your hotel, in the city centre, plopped your suitcase on the rack, got the kettle boiling, and fan out a pile of brochures on the bed with all the colourful allure of a peacock’s mating display. Where To Go, a United Nations of restaurants to choose Where To Eat, Chinese, Indian, Italian French, Greek, Thai, Scottish even, the Theatres, The Royal Concert Hall, the parkland delights of the ‘Dear Green Place’; Kelvingrove Park, The Art Galleries, Dali’s Christ of Saint John on the Cross already pencilled in as a ‘must see’, the Botanic Gardens, the People’s Palace on Glasgow Green, and Shopping: Buchanan Street, Braehead, Argyle Street, Sauchiehall Street, Day Trips to Loch Lomond, Rothesay, Dunoon, the Ayrshire Coast, Golf, Sailing, Fishing..you vow mentally to make the next visit longer. Even a week would not be enough.
You switch on the TV to get the local weather forecast. The Good Old BBC, Scottish News at teatime.
What’s this?
An FOI to Police Scotland reveals violent crime has risen?
A reporter on the streets near our hotel interviewing a bruiser of a lad with a black eye who clearly has drink or drugs problems.
She is talking about the ‘Mean Streets’, and refers to the Dear Green Place as the former ‘Murder Capital’ of Europe?
A convicted paedophile who ran Celtic’s Boys’ Club has been traced to California. A BBC team have traced him to his hideaway.
We had forgotten about that; Rangers versus Celtic, Catholics and Protestants. They hate each other.
Wasn’t Scott Sinclair, the ex- Aston Villa player, racially abused at a match between them last week end? Didn’t a convicted sex offender run on to the park and attack a player?
Razor gangs, sectarianism, a divided city.
This is depressing; Switch channels, BBC Parliament.
Nicola Surgeon, First Minister’s Questions, a Tory MSP on his feet, Murdo Fraser, according to the caption, a man with a face like a damp duckbilled platypus, is asking the Prime Minister of Scotland why Scotland has fewer immigrants than England, and asks if it is because Scotland is ‘an unattractive place to come’?
By this time, we are beginning to regret choosing Glasgow for our wee city break.
We decide to dine at the hotel. It is clearly not safe to venture out into the ‘Mean streets’ after dark.
Tomorrow, we’ll check if we can cut our stay short and head back south on Sunday.
We can see why immigrants think that Scotland is ‘an unattractive place to come.’
We decide to sleep with a chair wedged up against the door handle.
Jack here: thanks a bunch BBC Scotland and Murdo Fraser. Scotland shite, every day, every night.
The Yoons Up Here should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves and their relentless stream of lies, distortions, and half-truths. Blacken Scotland’s reputation at every turn and blame it on the EssEnnPee.
If Scotland is as bad as you make out, why don’t you all fuck off to Merrie England, your spiritual home, and leave the rest of us in peace.
I’ll leave comment on the Trail Of The Lonesome Opine, Ruth Davidson, the Rape denier, who will now ‘not opine’ on Tory humiliation of women, ‘til a later date.
Murdo Fraser is a disgusting little man.

Sorry for the delay, dioghaltas; we were out voting and having our traditional post prandial celebration tipple.
I attempted to extend your theme :- “And as the keyboard is currently my only weapon in this fight, I just fear it doesn’t have the same reach as the BBC.”
I wasn’t ‘telling you off’, I was commenting on the damage to Scotland that the BBC, MSM, and boneheaded unionists like Murdo Fraser do to Scotland’s reputation, by their constant lying, distortions, and predictions of financial doom. We are onto them, and sick fed up to the back teeth of their evil malicious diurnal anti Scottish rhetoric.
No need to keep your fingers crossed and hope for the best, since your only weapon is your keyboard.
We shall prevail because the internet and social media have more influence and reach than steam radio and Dead Tree Scrolls.
16-17 year olds are entitled to vote now. I doubt that many of them read news on crumbling papyrus, or watch Auntie Beeb’s news propaganda.
They are on line, now, so get keying, young sir.
Imagine if you were at tourist watching Reporting Scotland.
True they are not bringing up razor gangs, although the Billy Boys still gets big licks on match day.
But tonight Reporting Scotland described in gory detail the murder of a woman who had been stabbed 31 times…who needs to mention razor gangs to put tourists off?
Enough already. The I Pad is mightier that BBC Scotland..

I applaud you Paul and wish I had your eloquence. My area of South Ayrshire is mainly strong unionist and leave voters and when the two are together its almost impossible to conduct a sensible debate. Even with the horrors of more Tory rule, the fact they are promising Brexit is enough to ensure a Tory vote from people who would not normally vote that way. We live in scary times and I despair for the life ahead for my grandchildren and their peers who sadly are going to reap the result of the terrible decisions made in the next few months. Mention independence and the heads shake, eyes roll and I get told “that’s all you Nats can talk about” followed by rubbish they’ve read in the Mail/Sun/Express. It’s a daily uphill struggle but this old pensioner will not give up trying

She is playing to the mob in the cheap seats. It will no doubt secure her some bonus time to ride out scandal and brexit. But she has a piss poor hand and this “Oi Oi savaloy – how are ya” approach to Europe, will make it harder not easier. May can play the difficult woman – but she’ll find that all that achieves is ensure she fails. There a certain amount of shadenfrueda in seeing her fail and the UK get a well deserved kick in the balls.

What a disgrace T.May is. To threaten the rEU, and on top of that blame them for her incompetence is just the most stupid, shoot the rest of us in the foot, idiocy.

With bully Davidson and her comments about J.C.Juncker, as well, anyone could be forgiven for thinking that she is hoping Scotland is viewed in a less than positive light by the rEU! Anything to destroy the positive relationship built up by the SNP.
Davidson is a disrespectful, contemptuous rabid little bully, Scotland does not need people that in any position of power.

Scotland had a chance to escape this tory madness in 2014! The no voters, some I know https://youtu.be/t4bgVmmHBs8 wanted to ‘give the UK one more chance’ and who, having visited Norway, said, ‘why can’t we be more like Norway’, (!) surely must now seriously be questioning their motivations for keeping Scotland shackled to this so called UK!

Let’s just hope the voters get out today and show the yoons just what they think of the way that Scotland has been lied to, and told to shut up, for far too long now.
Not holding my breath, but in some areas, the yoon councils will suffer huge defeat. Fingers crossed.